Measuring Accountability for Coercive State Agent Abuses

• In Event: Poster Session: New Avenues in Human Rights Research & South Asian Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: New Avenues in Human Rights Research

Abstract

Coercive state agents, such as the police and military, are afforded a degree of discretion in implementing delegated policies, including repressive policies. This discretion, coupled with imperfect monitoring by the principal, generates a principal-agent problem and enables agents to determine the ultimate level of abuse faced by a population. This paper introduces a novel measure with two separate components, the Coercive Agent Accountability Scores, that utilize information from the U.S. Department of State's annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices to approximate the conditions under which agents operate and their likely expectations about accountability for their role in abuses--directed or otherwise--by the regime itself or by competing accountability mechanisms such as the judicial system or monitoring efforts by non-state actors.

Author

• Jennifer Nicole Barnes, Vanderbilt University